“I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.”
The long and short of it is that I still don't know...
The high blood sugar decision is going to be bumped up to one more level of medical rank. They could either opt to give me a waiver or make me take a glucose tolerance test which I might fail. So the jury is still out.
To make my day more stressful, I badly failed the hearing test the first time. Wasn't even close! Oddly, I took it later and passed just fine.
My blood pressure was elevated and wouldn't come down into the normal range, most likely because I was just so nervous. Now I have to have my own physician before I can unfail the physical.
Additionally, they want documentation to show that I functioned adequately in school after discontinuing medications for ADD in high school and college.
All of these things have to go through before I can unfail the physical.
On the more positive side, I scored a 99 on the ASVAB test for various learning and skills. I guess thats the highest you can get since the guy who has been administering it for 25 years said he has never seen anyone score 100. I'm happy about that, not that I really needed to score that high for what I want to do.
Additionally, they found me a slot for a chaplain assistant position at a unit in Indianapolis which is actually for an Sergeant (E5) even though I will only be coming in as an E4 if I make it in at all. That would help me get payed a bit better and have a leadership role with a most likely speedy track to actually becoming an E5. The bonus and other incentives I was hoping to get I won't right away. If I enlist for 3 years I can re-enlist after 1 year and be eligible for a hefty bonus. Plus I might get a starting bonus for "high graduate" level work coming in. That would be nice. So the question is, can I unfail the physical?
If Elijah had to pray 7 times for the rain clouds, and if the widow had to be persistent to convince the unjust judge, then perhaps I should keep praying and waiting on the Lord. I will pursue this till the fat lady sings, even if it does mean dragging this on probably another 3 weeks before I find out :/
Wow, I'll definitely keep praying about this. Going in at an E4 is great... not quite the underdog, better pay, and plenty of room to move up. Hope all the documentation goes through smoothly and quickly, and that things work out for the best!
Sorry to read about your high blood sugar. That stinks. Are you taking medication for it, or can it be managed by diet? I hope you and your doc can get it under good control. Congrats on the high test score, though. That's awesome!
That would be awesome if you go in as an E-4. I came in as E-3 since I had my AA degree from FC. And that's very awesome for doing so well on the ASVAB. I hope you can make it in still. Sorry I wasn't able to get up with you while I was at home. I wanted to, but I had my girl with me and we were only there for a few days, all of it spent being busy with family and such.
i'm not thinking of going in, but i wondered to myself how hard it was, so i found a full length practice one online. the mechanic section surprised me.
I won't be coming through Indiana on the way back. I came through on the way up but I totally forgot that I knew anyone in Indiana. I'm going to go back through Gettysburg, so Indiana would be a little out of the way.
No, I'm driving from here to the Pittsburg area where I will speak for a church that supports me and then go from there to Gettysburg and then down through Knoxville to Birmingham.
The recruiter who drove me down to Indianapolis so the military can put me up in a hotel in preparation for tomorrow (they call this the 'red carpet' treatment) tells me that:
(1) the doctor who gives me the physical tomorrow will basically be the one who makes the call on whether or not my blood sugar issues will keep me out of the military.
(2) He also tells me that there are people who might be able to make the job I want with the incentives I want magically appear with a little paper shuffling. If they offer me the chaplain's assistant position with the incentives tomorrow, it would be difficult to refuse the offer since it may be difficult to get such magic to happen again.
Thus, a lot can happen in a little time tomorrow. I could be forbidden to enter the Army Reserves or I could be sworn in with a sweet deal.
I don't have a job picked out and may not for some time, so I won't be swearing in. I would like to be a chaplain's assistant until I get enough graduate credits (72) to become a chaplain, which would take about 2-4 years. However, they can't find me a unit in Indiana that has a vacancy for that. And if they have to double up for that job in any given unit the incentives vanish away, and that would make opportunity not nearly as sweet. So, I'm going to get the physical and take the MEPS test tomorrow and just wait till something opens up. Or, at least thats the plan at the moment...
The Lord can still shut the door on all this pretty quickly tomorrow if he so chooses, so I await to hear more from him.
Eschatology is "the study of last things." In biblical stuidies, this term applies to how various biblical writers understood the events that would surround the coming messianic kingdom and/or the end of the world.
You may be surprised to know this, but students of the Bible or religion are not the only ones who speak of eschatology. Physicists, of all people, talk about eschatology. They discuss what will happen to the universe in the far distant future. Will mankind die out? Will the universe come to a screaching halt?
There are few sources of energy we have on this planet that don't ultimately come from the Sun. The sun makes photosynthesis work, which gives us plant matter, which gave us fossil fuel. The sun causes wind via air currents. Electricity is generated using fossil fuel. Perhaps the only source of energy not caused by our sun is nuclear power, but just like our nuclear sun, nuclear decay is only a matter of time. The sun will eventually burn all its energy. Were we to move to a different solar system, it would eventually die out too.
Big Bang theorists believe the universe began at a point and it has been expanding ever since. They once thought that, since the rate at which the universe expands is slowing down, gravity would pull the universe back in on itself in a reverse bang of sorts (heat death). But now they believe that even though the rate of expansion is slowing, it will go indefinitely. That is, all usable energy will be dispersed (all heat and all light) and things will continue to spread apart and the universe will become colder and colder and colder. That is, if things just continue on as they are...
To me, this generally accepted conclusion among scientists has implications. For the materialist, a person who believes that the physical universe is all there is, there is no hope for the human race. You might not catch them saying this very often, but thats probably because they try not to think about it very often. We can keep building and making intellectual findings and social achievements, but one day all will be lost. There will be no one to pass the torch to and nobody to one day read the chronicles of the human race to appreciate it or learn anything from it. All life in the universe will be unsustainable permanently. Perhaps we can find a cure for cancer, but we'll never find a cure for no food and no heat.
We can raise children and pass on our values, we can wish for them prosperity and that their children will have values and prosperity. But it is a finite amount of time before values will not help anyone. Prosperity will turn into struggling to survive. Struggling to survive will turn into despair. Despair will turn into doom. But soon there would be no one left to care or feel bad about it. At least the dinosaurs have us to look at their old bones in wonder. But when the universe becomes unable to sustain life further, there would be no one left to come along and wonder or learn anything about or from us. It would be rather anticlimactic.
All of human achievement would become as somemone who has just put the final touches on a sandcastle at the moment the incoming tide completely overwhelms it, only to watch utter and complete devestation with nothing to do about it. Will the human race ever irradicate poverty, hunger, social injustice, war and oppressive dictatorships among its population? Maybe, maybe not. But only for a while, if they do. The scourge of all those things will inevitably come back as all resources fail. But no monuments errected would have people left to notice them in time. Nobody to know. Nobody to care. All prosperity among our children would vanish as they suffer a horrible fate.
What is hope? Hope is hard to find a synonym for. Hope is thinking that there is a chance, to one degree or another, that things will work out well. We can have hope concerning little matters and big matters, short term and long term. But I am speaking here about hope for the human race. Hope that we will grow up as a people, do better and thrive. Or perhaps that there is any hope at all, that we will survive or matter.
So what is the ground of hope for the materialist? What motivates a person to invest her energy in making the world a better place, beyond one's own personal interests? Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying its difficult to recognize that one "ought" to do more to help other people as a matter of ethics. I'm just asking where a person finds the strength to do it without the hope that it will matter in the long run and make a difference. Recognizing the right thing to do and finding the motivation to do it are two different things. Its hard for anyone to keep putting one foot in front of the other without hope.
If we go on a diet but become convinced it won't help or its too hard, our motivation for follow through is cut off at the knees. If we desire to take a class to better ourselves but become convinced it is more difficult than it is worth in the end or that we will surely fail, why strain to study for it? We let ourselves go. This is similar to a person with a robust set of ethics yet with little hope that it will really make a difference to society or that they will be able to accomplish anything significant or even be able to exercise the self control to do what they think they ought to.
There are some materialists who have become great humanitarians. But I don't think most are. Some people are emotionally stable enough to do the right thing just because it is the right thing, regardless of perceived outcome. Most are not, I don't think. Most of us reach the breaking point when we feel that failure is unavoidable. Those materialists of the common sort who manage to be most socially just and humanitarians are those, I think, who try not to think too far ahead. Like those playing cards in a canoe so distracted that they don't realize they are about to go over the falls.
In order to have hope--hope that is so necessary for steadfastness--one must believe that the work they do will both be significant and continue to have significance. At least in most of the Old Testament era, when the Jewish people didn't have a strong belief about reward in the afterlife, they believed their families could live on and on and on. They didn't know the universe was rigged like an hour glass. They had a sense that they could do significant things and that there would be an unbroken continuity of effects of their actions. But with what we know about the universe now, we realize that the continuity of the human race will be broken as the universe eventually becomes unable to sustain life.
Continuity is regained by confidence in an afterlife. There will be someone to remember what we did and our deeds will follow us. Our identity will be maintained as well.
Significance, however, is a bit different. Whereas significance in the ancient world, and even today, is measured in the chain reaction of physical cosequences (good or bad), this has to mean something else in the metaphysical realm of the afterlife. Suffice it to say that who we have come to be is retained and we will be treated accordingly and the continuity in identity of others we influenced will be maintained as well.
I think the only guarentee that our thoughts, actions and ethics will have true significance and significance of a lasting nature, is if a loving God exists. And for this reason, I believe it is only belief in a loving God that can give the fullest hope. A loving God would be in control of the universe and capable of providentially manipulating events in the physical universe to reward noble efforts. If the physical universe was more-or-less mechanistically operating such that the way events unfold are subject to the chaos and randomness of all that is happening, then there is no particular reason to believe that noble efforts will be rewarded beyond their mere ability to impress those who hear of them.
But a loving God would also be able to give the "A for effort" after all life in this universe has ended, no matter what chain of events transpired physically. He can pitch the worn out universe in the cosmic waste basket once its work is finished and gather the pearls to himself. What other guarentee could there be that it will "all work out right in the end" without a personal agent in control of the end's unfolding?
Again, hope in a less deep and temporary form is available to the materialist in this age, but again I assert that it only exists for short term goals. Those materialists who think far enough ahead have less and less reason for hope. Ultimately, the materialist is without hope and without God in the world (Eph 2:2), a sad place to be. I just don't see any other way for hope in the fullest sense to rationally be held by human beings. Our fullest capacity for hope can only be realized when we believe that a loving God is in control of the universe who desires to provide continuity and significance for our choices and actions.
This is what Christian apologists refer to as "the human predicament" or "cultural apologetics." This doesn't offer a proof for God's existence, but it does in part answer our question, "Why do I need God?" Without a loving God, there is no hope for the human race since we are powerless over our eventual demise and the demise of everything we stood for. I am, however, satisfied that good evidence does exist for a loving God's existence. But would it be so bad to believe in a loving God out of sheer necessity? If one thought there was any chance at all, I would suppose not. Its better than...well, nothing. But there is more to it than that. The chiefest evidence for the existence of a loving God, in my opinion, is the cross and resurrection of Christ.
Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. 1 Cor 15:58
Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope....[we] will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words. 1 Thes 4:13,17-18
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Rom 5:2-6
Great thoughts.
I was just speaking to a friend about this last night.
If worship, and praise and fellowship are not a joy and a passion for you... church becomes not only uneventful, but burdensome, and discouraging.
In the same way, Ministry without the hope of heaven and the confidence of the activity and participation of the Spirit, and of Christ becomes no more than an obligation and a burden, and in the end will be short lived.
I am so thankful that we, in Christ, get to see his power and his activity, and can be consumed by a great hope, and by his amazing promises....
IF...
If we choose to let him lead, and us follow in awe of him.
Not to say that your serious, someone difficult questions in the past didn't have their place, but I so much more appreciate the Hope I find in your words constantly :) Thanks so so much!
